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Greenpeace to Abandon Whales in Antartica

The Greenpeace Foundation has announced that they will not be returning to the Antarctic Whale Sanctuary for the 2006/2007 Japanese whaling season.

In a recent meeting at the National Maritime Museum in Sydney, Australia, Shayne Rattenbury of Greenpeace said that they have accomplished all that they could this year and there was no need to return to Antarctic waters at the end of the year to confront whalers. If they return to Antarctica at all, it will be for a global warming research mission.

Greenpeace is estimated to have spent over one million dollars in promotions over the recent campaign to Antarctica where Greenpeace crewmembers were filmed observing the slaughter of the whales.

Shayne Rattenbury said that Greenpeace had to re-evaluate their tactics after one of their crew was thrown into the ocean during a confrontation with a Japanese whaling ship. ?If not for the fact that he was wearing a survival suit, he would have died in those frigid waters,? said Rattenbury.

Captain Paul Watson was amused at the statement. ?I thought that was what a survival suit was for,? he said. ?My crew all jumped into the water on New Year?s day to swim with the penguins and they were only wearing bathing suits. Rattenbury seems to forget that risk is what this is all about. Of course it is risky. Of course it is dangerous. If it was easy then everyone would be doing it. Now it looks as if only Sea Shepherd will be taking these risks against the pirate whalers next year.?

Greenpeace had two ships in Antarctic waters including the Esperanza that had the speed capability of being able to stay constantly with the Japanese fleet. The 30 million dollar Esperanza was the perfect ship for shutting down illegal Japanese whaling. Instead, Greenpeace used it as a filming platform. Greenpeace also had a refueling ship to re-supply their two vessels. Despite this the Greenpeace ships stayed only one week longer than Sea Shepherd and returned to Cape Town with plenty of fuel in their tanks.

?I visted the Esperanza in Cape Town,? said Farley Mowat Chief Engineer Trevor Van Der Gulik. They had enough fuel left onboard to have stayed with the Japanese fleet for another two weeks. When we arrived in Cape Town after a voyage of 8,500 miles we had only a days supply of fuel remaining. I cannot believe they abandoned the whales when they still had the means to stay down there.?

Greenpeace also refused to cooperate with the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and refused to post their coordinates on their website to prevent Sea Shepherd from getting the information.

?Greenpeace had the capability of helping us to stop the whalers, ?said Farley Mowat 1st Officer Alex Cornelissen. ?They knew that the whalers stopped whaling and ran every time the Farley Mowat approached. Instead they allowed dozens of whales to die that could have been saved.?

The much slower Farley Mowat was able to intercept the Japanese fleet three time and each time, the Japanese ships ran. In total the Whalers fled over 4,000 miles and it cost them 15 days of whaling.

?Greenpeace is taking credit for this,? said Captain Watson. ?Despite the fact that the whalers killed whales as Greenpeace watched. I have been reluctant to publicly criticize Greenpeace because despite their tactical limitations they were still down there and their filming of the whale killing was educational to the general public. But now that they have announced they are abandoning the whales of Antarctica, I have no problem in being critical of them. As far as I?m concerned, they used the whales to raise money and that money should be spent on returning to Antarctica and not for purposes other than what people donated it for.?

The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society is putting all efforts into securing a faster ship to return to the Antarctic Whale Sanctuary to once again pursue the illegal whaling vessels from Japan. There is no doubt that the Japanese whalers are afraid of Sea Shepherd?s policy of intervening against their illegal operations.

?If we can match their speed, we can shut them down.? Said Captain Paul Watson. ?If people are sincere about stopping these outlaw whalers then we invite them to help us raise the funds to purchase the ship needed to do the job. A donation to the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society is a donation directly to the whales and not to the administrative overhead, fund-raising machine and salaries of an eco-bureaucracy that has officially abandoned the campaign to stop the whalers in the Southern Oceans.?

Captain Paul Watson is not happy to be criticizing Greenpeace. He was a co-founder of Greenpeace back in 1972 and he was also the man who first developed the tactic of blocking the harpoons with Zodiac inflatable boats. He and the late Robert Hunter, the first President of the Greenpeace Foundation were the first two people to place their bodies on the line to protect whales in June 1975. Robert Hunter?s daughter Emily Hunter was a crewmember on the Sea Shepherd ship Farley Mowat for the recent campaign to Antarctica.

?Greenpeace was a cutting edge grassroots organization in the Seventies, ?said Captain Watson. ?Back then we were not afraid of being controversial and we were not afraid of taking risks. Sea Shepherd is now what Greenpeace was then. I never changed, Greenpeace changed when they exchanged gutsy effective intervention for ocean posing, public relations and fund-raising. They are rich and we are poor but we give a greater bang for the buck and we are the organization most feared by the pirate whalers and outlaw fishing operations.?

The Sea Shepherd Conservation Society cannot compete with the expensive ad campaigns and direct mail operations of Greenpeace. Despite this it will be a Sea Shepherd ship confronting the whalers in 2006/2007 and not Greenpeace.

greenpeace's actions in germany with the beached whale at the embacy was amazing, they should get credit for that. it seems they were a little soft on the water although. one good thing about all this is that while this whaling was taking place a helpful boost in japans snow fall was pelting their county with record breaking snow, causing economic problems and other problems resulting in more money loss then they could earn back at 10 whaling journeys. what was it like 30 feet of snow or something? at the same time the same weather was hitting the west coast with huge rainfall. maybe this 06/07 year will be dismil for the whalers cause their numbers are declining. cheers to the sea sheppard.

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Although it is true that some of Greenpeace's actions have credit and credit is givin where credit is due, it is very hard to sail along side a 300 million dollar a year organizetion with the ability to shut down antartic whaling forever and not even acknowledge our exsistance even when the founder of Sea Shepherd is one of the founders of Greenpeace! If Sea Shepherd had 1 tenth of there money no whale on this planet would ever die again. And worse yet about 20 persent of the money donated to Greenpeace is really ment for Sea Shepherd, bucause most think SS is GP. It's time to get the job done and stop thinking about personal goals.
Trevor

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yep! sad state of affairs when the whales only defense against hunters is protection in small scattered numbers. green peace seems more like a controlled orginization that follows strict guide lines from like the government or something. my question to them is why follow the rules when the whalers are not following them? they have no chance of winning. by the time they wake up it will be to late for some whales i'm sure, but atleast they will have pockets full of cash and bellies filled with yummie delicacies!!!!

and as far as the thermodynamics are concerned, yeah sad i know but that's just me....look for the positives in the worst situations.

i have an idea to start something much like sea sheppard but on a worldly scale, well much like green peace is or was i guess. a GWO (green) not NWO.
i would take a stab in the dark and go as far to say once the world is finally deemed out of whack in laymans terms, the NWO will use this as one of their primary themes.

Paul Watson is a revolutionary in my book....

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Mr. Pirate
Your comments are truly great and look fwd to your revolutionary idea in combating the world issues upon our generation in which we must respond. As for on a more worldly scale I can only hope that another group can come out of the grass roots and be more international that SSCS has been. Sea Shepherd Conservation Society has visited every continent on the planent and has confronted every pirate whaling nation, and will do so unill there are no whalers left. At that point they hope to retire and go home to there families unlike other "eco agencies" where the decline of our enviroment is profit and good for biz!!!
I truly look fwd to hearing more about you ideas and think anybody doing anythig is good, even GP is good on the education front. All things in time, just hopefully not to late!
Trevor
P.S. Captain Watson is truly an eco-lutionary

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Hello Mr. Armada,
I have been working for SSCS for 16 years and was born a member. I have sailed the Atlantic N and S, Pacific N and S, Indian, Both coast of north America, Austrialia, Antartica, South Africa, Canada, Europe etc. SSCS was started first in Vancouver B.C. then moved to L.A. and now in Friday Harbour. Paul Watson is a Canadian all though the organization has a lot of diputes with the government of Canada and our ships get a lot of harassment from the Canadian Gov even though we have Canadian registered vessels. SSCS also has an office in Holland, Vancouver Canada, Hamberg Germany and soon opening one in Melbourn Aus. It seems you have been folowing the work of SSCS, and nice to see people with genuine interest with our work! R u out of North America or some where else on this big rock, A Pirate in the Carib maybe?
Trevor

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Canadian National Newspaper Editorial Condemns the Canadian Seal Slaughter

Canada's conservative national newspaper the National Post ran an editorial by former Presidential speech writer Matthew Scully that eloquently eviscerated the idea that there is anything traditional or honourable about the annual Canadian seal slaughter. Sea Shepherd Conservation Society heartedly applauds both Mr. Scully for the literary lethality of his words in describing the slaughter for what it is – an embarrassment and a disgrace to Canada's international image. We also applaud the National Post for having the courage to run the article and for rejecting the Canadian government's pressure to stifle the media on covering the annual massacre of young seals.

This editorial is yet another nail to be hammered into the coffin of this despicable, obscene, and barbaric industry. The sealing industry is on the ropes now and is being pummeled with boycotts, national bans on pelts, protests, confrontations, and condemnations from celebrities and on the floor of the British House of Parliament.

This bloody cruel slaughter has already decimated harp seal populations, destroyed the cod fishery, and has caused irreparable ecological damage to the entire Northwest region of the North Atlantic Ocean.

Sea Shepherd has been fighting this horrific killing of young harp and hood seals since we were first founded in 1977. We have never retreated from our opposition to the killing and we never will. Saving these seals has been worth the beatings inflicted upon us, it has been worth the arrests and the imprisonment for the "crime" of documenting the killing, and it has been worth the expensive efforts to continually go to the ice floes to intervene against the killing of the seals.

Together, all of the organizations and individuals opposing the slaughter of the seals will prevail. This annual massacre of hundreds of thousands of newly born seals will be shut down. We will never rest until it is ended forever.

Forming right now inside their mothers, seal pups will soon fill the ice floes off Newfoundland and Labrador. Then comes one of their very first sights on this Earth -- the swarms of men bearing clubs, hooks, guns, and knives. Welcome to the world.

Nature has its own ruthless ways, as those men like to remind us, and makes no special allowance for the young and helpless. But this annual killing binge is not of nature's design, and there has always been something uniquely abhorrent in the spectacle.

If we could understand what possesses people to do such things, and do it all with such smug self-assurance, the insight would have relevance far beyond Atlantic Canada. Their professed reasons - the marginal economic benefits of the hunt, the protection of an ancient "way of life," etc. - have never really explained it. When you've dispensed with all their excuse-making, it becomes clear we are dealing here with some deep and implacable force.
Cruelty is the endpoint of greed and other vices, and rarely done for its own sake. Yet in every age and every place, there is a certain type of man who glories in violence -- only more when the victims are helpless and innocent. There is "a cruelty that is fed, not weakened, by tears," as a long-ago philosopher observed. Whether this malevolence directs itself at humans or at animals, it all comes from the same rot, the same dark and unreachable place in the human heart.

I was struck last year by a letter to this paper from one seal-pup slaughterer who took offense at my use of "innocence." The word springs naturally enough to mind when one is attempting to describe newborn mammals left defenseless on the ice floes that are their nursery, creatures so new to the world they cannot swim and can barely crawl. But you can understand why someone who clubs, shoots, or skins alive hundreds of such creatures in an afternoon would find the term uncomfortable.

Twenty or so centuries' worth of Western literature and religious allusion has looked to young animals as the very embodiments of vulnerability and innocence, as in the Lamb who suffered for the sins of the world. And there is no reason to shy from plain moral language here as well. That same tradition left us with an abundance of other ideas such as humility before Creation, the moral restraint of the strong toward the weak, and the spirit of mercy that extends even to humble animals - ideas readily grasped by all except the perverse hard of heart.

There is a passage in The Heart of Darkness that has a familiar ring. If you substitute "sealskin" for "ivory," Joseph Conrad could be reporting directly from the ice floes: "The word ivory rang in the air, was whispered and sighed. A taint of imbecile rapacity blew threw it all, like a whiff from some corpse ... and outside, the silent wilderness surrounding this cleared speck of the earth struck me as something great and invisible, like evil or truth, waiting patiently for the passing away of this fantastic invasion."

A harsh but truthful portrait of the type -- of men who think that every last thing on Earth is there for the taking, and traipse about as if their only business in this world is to allocate death.

More than anything else, what really amazes me about the seal-pup slaughter is the stubborn pridefulness of it: Let all the world think they are callous fools. Let nation after nation slam the doors on their stolen products, as Greenland, Denmark, and Italy have done in recent days. Let a worldwide boycott of Canadian fishery products destroy the markets and jobs of other people. For these folks, all of this is only more reason to set course toward the seal nurseries.

They talk a lot about traditional values and the like, as opposed to modern, "urban" values, and you wonder how many of these characters still like to think of themselves as good Christian men. Maybe by now, as I am told by witnesses to the mayhem, the pretenses have all pretty well fallen away. We can be certain, in any case, that even when the cameras are barred and the protesters kept away, no cruelty goes unrecorded, and no forsaken creature's whimper is beyond His hearing. If the Good Shepherd does indeed watch over those scenes, I would not want to be wearing their bloody boots.

Recall, too, that all of this cruelty is subsidized, propped up by millions of dollars a year from Canada's taxpayers. Yet all arguments were lost last time around on Prime Minister Paul Martin. Even to the very end, he could be heard pandering in Atlantic Canada during last month's election with pledges to "save the seal hunt."

So let it be a Conservative government that finally brings the wretched business to an end. It would be a fitting start for Prime Minister Stephen Harper, a courageous and merciful exercise of his new powers.

And to a watching world, no decision of his could more dramatically demonstrate that corrupt old ways will no longer be tolerated, and a new day has truly arrived in Ottawa.

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canada is a great place. happy to see people are speaking out about the slaughter of seals. change is on the way it sounds!! this will make your hard work and the hard work of others all the better.

i was born in washington, raised on a washington island as well, and still live in western washington. always been interested in conservation and green living. currently reading this great book called "the new ecological home" by Danial D. Chiras. i recmomend it. a lot of green home tech. stuff...it's good reading.

is the sscs's ships available for viewing when in the home port here?

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I love Washington State and the pacfic northwest in general! SSCS ships now are in the south seas. The Farley Mowat is in Cape Town adn the Sirenian is in the galopagos. The ships are very rarely in one place for very long. To much work to do.

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this might be a silly question but how does the average person make a living and join a conservation society like the sscs (much needed) or green peace? these are basiclly a donate your time type of orginizations....am i correct?

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For my self I worked many years as a volanteer. As time went on I recieved my engineering papers and now work as a freelance engineer and am also hired by SSCS in the only paid capacity as Chief Engineer on board when needed. All other crew donate there time but it is a requirement for the ship to have a quaified engineer on board. So this is how it's done. As for GP all postions are paid positions.
Trevor

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Two exceptionally mortal blows were stuck against freedom of speech this last week.

The first blow was struck when an Austrian court sentenced British historian David Irving to three years in prison for denying the holocaust in a speech he delivered seventeen years ago.

The second blow was struck with the indictment of Animal Rights activist Rod Coronado for a speech he gave in 2003. Mr. Coronado is facing twenty years in prison.

David Irving did indeed deny the holocaust and his ludicrous assertions that ignore historical evidence to the contrary make him a very incompetent and contemptible historian indeed. He is not a very admirable human being and can legitimately be described as a racist. However he did not injure anyone. He certainly did not kill anyone. He did not damage or steal anyone's property. All he did was voice an opinion.

And for that he has been sentenced to three years in a prison!

Rod Coronado was indeed convicted of a felony crime for his animal rights activism and he served five years in a U.S. Federal prison for his crime. He was indicted this week for giving a speech in 2003 about the activities that led to his arrest and imprisonment.

Coronado was arrested near his home in Tucson, and after arraignment is expected to be transferred to San Diego, California for trial. Last year, 3 activists were jailed for refusing to cooperate with the grand jury that indicted Coronado. Danae Kelley, who was imprisoned for 2 months, said on her release in October "In the world of secret grand juries, nothing is known, targets aren't confirmed, and indictments haunt everyone. Grand juries are like riding a roller coaster blindfolded--anything goes. They have become a serious threat to our constitutional rights, and I encourage every citizen who receives a subpoena to resist and every other to voice support."

This may be easier said than done. Last month dozens of animal right activists were arrested and indicted on charges stemming from information received from informers, most of whom were threatened into giving up names in return for escaping charges themselves.

"It is like the McCarthy witch hunts have been revived with a vengeance," said Erin Jameson, an activist from Eugene, Oregon.

In Europe where cartoons depicting the face of the prophet Mohammed have been condemned, newspapers have been censured and free speech is under open attack by extremists. Cartoons of the holocaust and openly anti-Semitic editorials and cartoons are common in the Muslim world, published, read and approved of by the same people who are screaming racism and intolerance in reaction to the cartoons depicting the prophet Mohammed. In Iran, imprisonment is the sentence for those who deny the existence of god and there are many in America who would like to see the same treatment given to atheists and pagans.

These are dangerous times when imprisonment is the punishment for voicing an opinion.

What is even more frightening is that the Western media seems shell-shocked and reluctant to question these arrests or even the ridiculous hysteria of the anti-cartoon crowd.

We may not agree with David Irving. We may not agree with Rodney Coronado but we should be defending their right to speak, to think, to voice their opinions in a free and tolerant society. Tolerance means tolerance for all views, not just our own and not just the safe, warm and fuzzy kind.

The Freedom of speech is the foundation of all other freedoms. If this one freedom crumbles so will the entire edifice of freedom. At the moment the foundation is being hammered with rock shattering blows and Irving and Coronado are two expendable chips. But the chips are building up and the structure is becoming weaker. When the structure collapses that will be the day that democracy, freedom, and liberty expire in Western civilization and we will enter a new dark age where intolerance, tyranny and dictatorship will reign supreme.

The United States Constitution is the most powerful enshrinement of the rights of humanity ever made into law. It holds that the right to speak and the right of free expression must be respected even when the message is not. It holds that we must be tolerant of all opinions, philosophies and beliefs. It does not require respect, support or credence given to these beliefs, opinions and philosophies. The freedom to speak must be all inclusive and must protect the Christian, the Muslim, the Jew, the Atheist, the Scientologist, and those who believe the world is as flat as a pancake.

What happened to Mr. Irving and Mr. Coronado this week is a full frontal assault on the bastion of free speech and the lack of criticism, the lack of controversy in response to the sentencing of Irving and the indictment of Coronado will only encourage more assaults and more hammer blows to freedom.

A Lutheran pastor and survivor of a Nazi concentration camp once said: "First they came and took away the communists and I did nothing because I wasn't a communist. Then they took away the Jews and I did nothing because I wasn't Jewish. Then they took away the unionists and again I did nothing because I wasn't in a union. And then, when they came for me, there was no one there to stop it."

We can say that this week they sentenced the holocaust revisionist for voicing his opinion, then they indicted the animal rights activist for speaking about his experiences and we did nothing. When they come for us for questioning God, the government, the corporations, or the war, who will be there to defend us? When they jail us for having an opinion that is not in rigid conformity to the government or religion will they silence us?

Irving’s sentence and Coronado’s indictment are the foot in the door for the jackboot of intolerance and an encouragement to those who would trample our freedoms.

The question is, will we stand our ground or will we surrender our freedom in return for false promises of security?

Paul Watson is the founder of the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society and the co-founder of the Greenpeace Foundation. He is an author, writer and lecturer and a resident of Friday Harbor, Washington.

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click the link to see democracy and freedom of speech in action. iraqi's must be tickled pink given they're at critical meltdown via a civil war and terrorists.
i got one solution for <ALL>, drop the differences the only color we should think is green.

personally i look down on inmature people who would draw cartoons, images or what have you about anyone's race or religion, non religion... whatever country your from. that just spells trouble.....live like a quest for fire and well....